This is a beautiful book. If it were a painting it would be in
tones of grey and shades of blue for the sea, and for the land,tones of beige and green, with splashes of
colour added by the people who travel across its landscape. And I would buy it
instantly for fear of losing it.

This may seem like a strange way to begin a book review, and
maybe this is not really an actual book review; maybe it’s more like in praise
of good writing, a good story, and the environment. This last may seem too
obvious to mention because we know that the author is a well known
environmentalist. However, this book is not just an opportunity to recognize
the importance of the environment; it is a hymn to it. You cannot read this
story and come away unmoved by the significance of our environment and its
importance to the characters in the story, andto the island.

The setting is the environment; more specifically the sea. The
characters andthe sea are entwined in a
dance, an embrace, which wesoon
understand, can at any given time actin
favour of the human characters, or not.It is this overarching character,the sea, unmoved one way or the other by all that is happening,and bearingno animosity to anyone, thatforms the backdrop to this story.This sea can bring you a bounty, yet you can get lost in it, gone to
drift.

Of the two main human characters, one is Lloyd, a young boy, who
is worried about his grandfather, who has not returned from a fishing trip, in
whatLlloyd perceives as good time. None
of the other characters, mainly fisher families, Lloyd’s family, those who
interact with them along the various coastal areas, seem to be very worried.
You are left to wonder if, as they suggest, that perhaps there is nothing
wrong;Lloyd is unduly anxious. On the
other hand, you wonder if it is that they do not wish to make Llloyd feel any
more worried than he is. You fear that they know something that he does not,
that they are not telling him the whole truth.

The other character is Gramps, Lloyd’s grandfather, whose voice
Lloyd can hearin his head, “I come from
a line of fishermen.”This is as
powerful as if the statement were, “I come from aline of kings.” We believe this, a line of
greatness.

Grampsalso tells his story.And so we have the two stories, Llloyd
looking for his grandfather, using any means necessary, his good friend,
Dwight, the Coastguard, Jules, the lady who cares about the dolphins, his
mother, his ne’re-do-well father, his grandfather’s friends; and Gramps’story of his own father, his many brothers,
all fishermen, and his mother. We come to care about Gramps’ family, as well as
for Lloyd, whose determination and bravery in his search for Gramps often
astounds us.

It eventually dawns on us that Gramps is not on any of the main
cays off the coast of the island,but is
stranded on what seems to bea mere rock
in the sea. The tension is creatednot
only by Lloyd’s search for his grandfather, the question of howdolphins fit into this scenario, and whether
his grandfather can be found in time, but also by seeing theold man himself wondering how long he can
survive on little crabs and rain water, the latter comingsporadically.

The author uses the device of alternate chapters for each of
these two human characters, so that we can measure Lloyd’s attempts against the
will of his grandfather to survive. It works; we are not distracted; rather,
weare caught up in the emotion of the
situation.

The language is measured, like a tale told on dark nights by
lantern light, increasingthe feeling
ofbeing at the mercy of the
elements.Descriptions are rich, asseen in Gramps recollection of a sunrise.

Then I realised thatI could see my hands and feet as a grey light
stole across the sea. And to the east I saw the sky turning into a hundred
different colours from the blue of a summer day to the dark purple of the
thickest squall, from the pale pink of the inside of a conch shell to the
bright orange of a ripe mango, until the round ball of the sun itself came up
and the colours of thesky spread over
the water and even warmed our faces. I knew then that the best place to see a
sunrise was atsea.

It is for this reason alone that you cannot hurry through this
book. Even as the mystery deepens, you need to stop to see what the characters
see, to feel what they feel.

Then, suddenly you may be
caught unawares, by an intervention into this beauty, alerting you todanger, which may be lurking, as in Gramps’
description of his brothers going to sea:

It was late when they left and I
thought the night was darker than usual.We stood on the beach and watched them go. The boats made a ragged
triangle formation, like a flock of birds, and for a few seconds their wakes
were visible. Then they pierced the night and disappeared.

And you understandin the
sameness of their going to sea, the routines of their lives, the power ofnature, of the dark, of the night, of the
sea.

The dialogue, which is a mixture of standard Jamaican English,
and what I like to call a modified Creole, is well handled. It effectively
representsthe mother tongue of our
people, but does not become so deep as to make it difficult to read, or for the
bookto travel to other countries. From
Lloyd to his grandfather, to Jules the uptown girl, their voices ring true.And this use of language, this love and
respect for the sea, for the creatures of the sea, bridges what could be social
differences and makes us one.

Consequently, just as you come to respect the environment,you come to respect the people who depend on
the sea, and their way of life. The author does not allow you to feel anypity for the difficulty of their lives.This is a great skill, to describe another
life with empathy. You may even begin to think that like Lloyd and his
grandfather,these people are the salt
of the earth, or the sea, their nobility in facing the dangers of the seasurpassing those who make a safe living from
the land. And then the author brings you back to reality. These people are no
better or worse than people anywhere. They have their nobility, they have their
heroes and their villains, and their awful betrayals.

This coming of age story of a boy called Lloyd, who loves his
grandfather,will leave many wondering
about the meaning of it all, and yet Llloyd must make sense of it.

This book should be read in all schools. To say that a book
should be read in schools, makes it sound like a textbook, or the over-worked
literature set-books. However, I would want all our young people to read it, to
discuss it, and that seems to be the only way to get it to them. This is a beautiful book!

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About Me

I'm author of children's stories and editor of textbooks. My stories have been published in the UK, the USA and Jamaica. I have won a number of awards, including a Bronze Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica (2004) and the special prize for the best children's story by the Commonwealth Foundation (2011). I have prsented papers on children's literature both in Jamaica and overseas, and have run writing workshops both in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean.